Advice on doing a Thesis please

[VampyTheBuffetSlayer]

DD is in her second year of a Humanities degree and is starting to think about her Thesis. She hasn't pick a subject yet and I don't know how to advise her cos I don't know about these things.
Am I right to advise that if she doesn't know the subject which will dictate the supervisor, then she should do it the other way round. Pick a supervisor that she likes, is on her wavelength, is helpful and find a topic that fits in with their speciality.
Is there anything else I should be telling her?

Well I don't think I would be offering any advice instead I'd be pointing her in the direction of the guidance she will have been given at university and the university library.

I personally would always pick the subject area first rather than the supervisor as any longer piece of work can become a bit grim if you aren't fully engaged with the topic.

I'm a second year and we've been told that it's better to choose the topic area rather than the supervisor - she'll be spending a lot longer with the subject than the supervisor!

All universities (and faculties within) - have a different time scale - we've already done a piece of coursework outlining the question, methodology, a mini lit review etc. Has her university given her the necessary deadlines, processes and supervisor specialisms?

I know that you are supposed to pick the topic first but life isn't always that simple eg she was half thinking about a subject but the best person to be supervisor is off on sabbatical next year. She has a few topics bubbling away but didn't know which one to do; using the Supervisor as the deciding factor made sense to me.
She had a bad experience last year with her personal tutor. She had to get him to sign off her course choices for this year but it took about a month to track him down. The courses were filled on a first come, first served basis so she was tearing her hair out. She doesn't want another contact like that for her thesis.

Thanks for mentioning the Library though. That's a good idea: check what resources and references there are!

IIRC the thesis is 9,000 words.

I barely saw my supervisors for my dissertations (I was crazy and did a double dissertation) and it was not helpful so it makes sense to avoid notoriously bad/unavailable ones and if that helps to eliminate topics that's good.

Otherwise I'd approach all the potential supervisors with a topic and see which one she feels most enthusiastic about.

get her to write a couple of short paras about the questions she wants to investigate in each of her topics. For instance, if she's thinking "children's tv" (sorry but I'm going to pick subjects I've supervised here) then what does she want to know about children's tv? It's a weird process - as you narrow it down (policy, say, rather than consumption or production) you find you start getting more ideas/questions (what policies are there? how have they affected the industry? how have they shaped particular channels/programs/careers?) - and if that isn't happening it's probably not the topic for her. Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for all your help and suggestions which I have passed on to DD. She is especially grateful for the prompt to check up on procedure - she says that the university have a habit, when asked about rules & regs, of saying things like "We put it up on the website a month ago ... oops, didn't we tell you?"